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Friday, January 21, 2011

Gamification As Consumer Oriented Serious Games

Serious Games mapping real-world onto a game environment

Via:Richard Carey Digital Media- Gamification is Coming. Are You Ready?Richard Carey has just published a superb post Gamification is Coming. Are You Ready? (Please find also GDC 2011 Serious Games Summit: Gamification Day)His opening statement - The debate about the use of gamification hardly started before being overtaken by tools, workshops and service providers all too willing to use game techniques to start up their latest digital masterpiece, while many in the gaming world are complaining “Not so fast!” - by itself could be a source of relentless discussion.

In this sense he also declares The Great Gamification Debateslated for GDC’s one-day Serious Games Summit segment this March may be worth the price of admission alone.In his post, Carey tries to provide some perspective on what some say is gratuitous but others call an effective User Experience design.

The gamification wiki and encyclopedia to guide the uninitiated, a gamification platform that purports to make it easy, and the gamification blog are examples of Carey’s useful references coupled with the gamification controversy set to unfold at the upcoming Game Developers Conference 2011.His closing statement is pretty close to my heart and perfectly aligned with my often declared credo: “If you want to change the world, play it first!”“Having been active in the Serious Games movement for more than five years now, the “gamification is good” vs. “gamification is evil” controversy feels manufactured. Serious Games are, by definition, using game mechanics to lure/motivate/reward users for desired behaviors, so I assert that gamification is a useful tool which can be used to motivate some users, in some circumstances, by rewarding them for performance, achievement or other metrics appropriate to the intention of the application/service/product at hand.”